1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of customer self service systems for resource search and selection, and more specifically, to a novel mechanism for annotating response sets via an adaptive algorithm, wherein the annotations supplied are used to drive any visualization system that presents resource response results.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Currently there exist many systems designed to perform search and retrieval functions. These systems may be classified variously as knowledge management systems, information portals, search engines, data miners, etc. However, providing effective customer self service systems for resource search and selection presents several significant challenges. The first challenge for current systems with query capability is that serving queries intelligently requires a large amount of user supplied contextual information, while at the same time the user has limited time, patience, ability and interest to provide it. The second challenge is that searching without sufficient context results in a very inefficient search (both user time and system resource intensive) with frequently disappointing results (overwhelming amount of information, high percentage of irrelevant information). The third challenge is that much of a user""s actual use and satisfaction with search results differ from that defined at the start of the search: either because the users behave contrary to their own specifications, or because there are other contextual issues at play that have not been defined into the search. The prior art has addressed the use of some of the features of the resources (content and other) in relation to the user""s context and/or prior use of other resource search and selection systems, for selection of responses to current user""s queries. Representative prior art approaches systems described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,724,567 entitled xe2x80x9cSystem for Directing Relevance-Ranked Data Objects to Computer Usersxe2x80x9d; U.S. Pat. No. 5,754,939 entitled xe2x80x9cSystem for Generation of User Profiles For a System For Customized Electronic Identification of Desirable Objectsxe2x80x9d; and, U.S. Pat. No. 5,321,833 entitled xe2x80x9cAdaptive Ranking System for Information Retrievalxe2x80x9d.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,321,833 describes an adaptive record ranking method for full text information retrieval, which quantifies the relevance of retrieved records to query terms occurring in the record. The method utilizes a multilevel weighting technique which permits user input to affect record weighting at each level of the ranking process. The method utilizes weighted attributes of properties of terms occurring in the records of a database and compensates for the distance between adjacent words of complex terms. The method has been implemented on large full text databases and the resulting rankings achieve a relatively high level of precision in ranking the relevance of retrieved records to a user query. However, this method does not take into account user context data, and thus is not specialized based on a user situation within the whole system.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,724,567 describes an information access system that stores items of information in an unstructured global database. When a user requests access to the system, the system delivers to that user an identification of only those items of information which are believed to be relevant to the user""s interest. The determination as to the items of information that are relevant to a user is carried out by ranking each available item in accordance with any one or more techniques. In one approach, the content of each document is matched with an adaptive profile of a user""s interest. In another approach, a feedback mechanism is provided to allow users to indicate their degree of interest in each item of information. These indications are used to determine whether other users, who have similar or dissimilar interests, will find a particular item to be relevant.
For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 5,754,939 describes a method for customized electronic identification of desirable objects, such as news articles, in an electronic media environment, and in particular to a system that automatically constructs both a xe2x80x9ctarget profilexe2x80x9d for each target object in the electronic media based, for example, on the frequency with which each word appears in an article relative to its overall frequency of use in all articles, as well as a xe2x80x9ctarget profile interest summaryxe2x80x9d for each user, which target profile interest summary describes the user""s interest level in various types of target objects. The system then evaluates the target profiles against the users"" target profile interest summaries to generate a user-customized rank ordered listing of target objects most likely to be of interest to each user so that the user can select from among these potentially relevant target objects, which were automatically selected by this system from the plethora of target objects that are profiled on the electronic media.
A major limitation of these prior art approaches, however, is the absence of a mechanism for implementing user context in informing the ranking of the resources. Moreover, these prior art approaches are limited in that they do not enable user tutoring of the application for ranking information. That is, prior art approaches do not provide for the adaptation or changing the ranking over time, for example, based on a history of user interactions with the system. Another major limitation of the prior art is that these systems do not annotate the response sets via an adaptive algorithm and moreover, do not use the resulting annotations to drive visualization systems.
It would be highly desirable to provide for a customer self service system, a mechanism that annotates query response sets via an adaptive algorithm and wherein the annotations the mechanism supplies may be used to drive any visualization system.
It is an object of the present invention to provide for a customer self service system for resource search and selection a mechanism for supplying annotations to a set of query response sets via an adaptive algorithm.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide for a customer self service system for resource search and selection an annotation mechanism for annotating query response sets wherein the annotations affect the order that these resources are presented to the user.
It is another object of the present invention to provide for a customer self service system for resource search and selection, an annotation mechanism for annotating query response sets wherein the annotations provided affect the order that these resources are presented to the user and wherein the ordering is based on features of the resource itself when viewed through the user""s context.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide an annotation function for a customer self service system for resource search and selection that implements a supervised learning algorithm wherein training data utilized for this algorithm is derived from prior user interactions and the annotation function is optimized based on an annotation scoring metric.
According to the invention, there is provided a system and method for annotating resource results obtained in a customer self service system that performs resource search and selection. The method comprising the steps of: receiving a resource response set of results obtained in response to a current user query and receiving a user context vector associated with the current user query, the user context vector comprising data associating an interaction state with the user; applying an ordering and annotation function for mapping the user context vector with the resource response set to generate an annotated response set having one or more annotations; and, controlling the presentation of the resources response set to the user according to the annotations, wherein the ordering and annotation function is executed interactively at the time of each user query.
Further, in an off-line process, a supervised learning algorithm is implemented for receiving user interaction data from among a database of user interaction records and an annotation scoring metric representing a measure of performance in locating resource response results displayed via a graphical interface. The algorithm generates ordering and annotation functions which are adaptable based on history of user interactions as provided in the database of user interaction records. The result of this invention is the ability to drive any visualization system for presenting resource response results in the most beneficial and meaningful way to the user via an interface when performing search and resource selection.
Advantageously, such a system and method of the invention is applicable for a customer self service system in a variety of customer self service domains including education, real estate and travel.